


Unguis

by junal



Series: The Adventures that Ensue After an Experience as a Cursed Cat [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Body Horror, Canon-typical Miscommunication, Established Relationship, Fluff, Happy Ending, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Paranoia (from Jon), Reference to Injury Recovery, Updates Tuesday and Saturday
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29363343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/junal/pseuds/junal
Summary: Jon, his boyfriends, and Sasha deal with the aftermath of a worm siege, a police investigation, the horrors of the universe, and a dress code.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Series: The Adventures that Ensue After an Experience as a Cursed Cat [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2151843
Comments: 184
Kudos: 189





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello again! scritches pt 2 electric boogaloo

The tunnels are dank and damp and relatively weak light does little to alleviate the atmosphere of utter dread. Though Jon’s admittedly biased, considering his previous experiences.

“…Spooky,” Sasha notes, burrowing into her jacket as Jon closes the trap door. “Definitely shady. Ah, fuck, I stepped on a dead worm.”

“So that was the crunch,” Jon deadpans, pocketing the key and zipping the pocket closed.

“Have you done research into this place?” Sasha asks, trailing after Jon as he heads deeper into the tunnels.

“Yes. The tunnels –”

“Millbank,” Sasha agrees.

Jon gives her a startled look.

“I also did my research,” Sasha admits. “The tunnels supposedly lead to Millbank Prison.”

“Are you suggesting excessive urban exploration in search of a path to an abandoned prison?” Jon asks, pausing to make a mark in chalk on the wall when they come to a fork in the tunnels. He does not remember this particular feature from previous exploits.

“No. If I want to go to prison, I’ll ask gran for a list of crimes worth incarceration.”

“I don’t think Angela would let you get caught,” Jon muses, and Sasha shrugs.

“It’s not like she’s part of the mafia.”

“That remains to be seen.”

//

The paths are free of worm corpses as they run, turning this way and that at random because the _fucking chalk marks are gone_ , Sasha gripping Jon’s elbow painfully to keep him from falling too far behind.

The creature behind them speaks.

Jon ignores it. He can listen to the tape after he survives this particular chase.

One turn.

A second.

A third.

A wall appears in their path from out of nowhere, and Sasha barely skids to a stop in time to avoid crashing into it, instead bouncing off of the brick in a way that, were Jon’s life a cartoon, would be accompanied by an exaggerated sound of a rubber ball.

She recovers.

The monster doesn’t grab them, because Sasha scoops Jon up and charges the monster like an _idiot_ and it doesn’t react fast enough to get a hold on either of them – but its hands graze Jon’s braid and he briefly, hysterically, considers a haircut.

A wall appears behind them.

The monster can’t follow now, Jon thinks. Probably. Maybe.

…It probably can, considering their luck.

//

“Sasha,” Jon says primly, flailing until she puts him down, “I recognize why you picked me up, but –”

“We were getting chased by a weird monster –”

“ _But_ I am no longer a cat, and I would like warning.” Jon brushes his shirt down, runs a hand over his braid, sighs. “And you are the one who ran into a wall.”

“Yeah.” Sasha sighs. “Sorry. In non life or death situations, I’ll ask.”

“Thank you.”

There’s a moment of silence, and then –

“So, moving walls and more weird monsters.”

“And dead worms.”

“And dead worms,” Sasha agrees. “I’d like to say, I anticipated sexist microagressions from Elias, not eldritch monsters.”

“The monster isn’t his fault,” Jon says immediately. “There’s – it isn’t right. It isn’t his style.” That’s the best way Jon can describe it, the best words that he can wrap his mouth around to express the _wrongness_ that comes to him when he tries to tie that… thing, and Elias, together.

“Nah, his style is tacky keyrings.”

“Sasha, I know for a fact that before you bought brass knuckles, you had one of those cat head key rings that you’d stick your fingers through so you could use them to gouge out somebody’s eyes.”

Sasha gives Jon a surprised look.

“…Angela kept it,” he mumbles. “Look. That’s not –”

“Yeah, monster. Hey, do you have a tape recorder running?”

Jon blinks. “I – yes. How did you know?”

“Felt it when I scooped you up. Also, it seems like ‘your style.’” Sasha’s grin takes the edge off the teasing, and Jon can’t find it in himself to argue for the sake of his pride. Or reputation, if he had any sort of one left.

“Where to now?” Sasha asks, sticking her hands in her jacket pockets.

“Home,” Jon says immediately. “I’m tired and hungry and in pain.”

“That’s what happens when you run around a tunnel while still full of wormholes.”

Jon gives Sasha a withering look, and she holds up her hands.

“Okay, I’ll stop,” she promises. “Are you planning on dragging your way kicking and screaming back to work?”

“…Yes,” Jon admits. “I’ll be here on Monday.”

“Then I’ll see you Monday.” Sasha pulls Jon into a one-armed hug, and leaves as he locks the door to the Institute behind them. it’s cold out, nearly dark, but Jon can see well enough to judge when Sasha’s out of earshot.

The tape recorder still has room to record. Not a whole lot, but a bit.

Jon takes the recorder out of his pocket, and speaks. “Supplemental. It’s far more likely that Gertrude’s killer is one of… no.” He shakes his head. “Probably Elias. Sasha, like Angela said, wouldn’t have stopped with one person if she really wanted to kill her way into the Archivist position. Martin – Tim… I don’t think so. I can’t think so. I – well, it’s not like I have a lot of experience with romantic partners, but I think my taste is better than somebody who murdered a woman who was technically a coworker, who they had virtually no contact with.” Jon sighs, taps the corner of the tape recorder against his forehead. “I do wonder – how did the killer get a gun?”

//

“…Statement ends.” Jon fiddles absently with his tunnel key – copied the night before – as he records the final notes surrounding the statement, turning off the recording program on his computer with a bit more vitriol than perhaps completely necessary.

It was early. Martin hadn’t even woken up when Jon left, and Sasha either ignored his texts or was asleep. Probably the former.

But there was something vaguely relaxing about recording useless, meaningless statements with no particular influence on Jon’s world view as a whole, statements that he could pause whenever and wherever he wished.

A story about an American werewolf in London. Really. And the statement giver hadn’t even gotten the plot right – probably hadn’t even skimmed the Wikipedia article.

Jon limps slightly as he files the statement away in the stacks, on the shelves that Tim had dubbed the “thoroughly disproved because honestly, these are just fucking embarrassing, they couldn’t have taken some creative writing classes before coming in for bullshit pranks?” shelves. There are eight. And they’re almost completely full, shelves sagging dangerously under the weight.

“Good morning!” Sasha calls from the door into the Archives. “Jon or monster?”

“Jon,” Jon calls back. “Would you look into the medical records from Peter Moreau today?” He moves out from the shelves and into line of sight and speaking range. “Tim couldn’t get the hospital to release them.”

“Good for the hospital,” Sasha muses, putting down a vaguely comically huge takeout cup from a nearby coffee shop. “What’s the address?”

Jon blinks. “Why do you need to go?”

“The better the security, the bigger the in-person backdoors,” Sasha says. “Address, Jon.”

Jon rattles off the address, tries not to think about why he doesn’t need to go refer to his notes to do so, fails in that endeavor, and ends up telling Sasha which train connection she’d need to take.

“I could’ve just google mapped it,” Sasha says, picking her cup back up. “I’ll be back later.”

“Shall I have bail money ready?” Jon asks dryly.

“Call gran if I get arrested,” Sasha says without a hint of irony. “Or get Tim to come charm me out of jail.”

Jon snorts indelicately at that. “Fair.”

//

Jon’s halfway through recording a statement when his phone begins to buzz. He doesn’t stop, because he’s gone through half a dozen clearly false statements (three went on the “They mean well but yeah no” shelves, two on the “Hey at least they read the Wikipedia summary for the horror movie they’re ripping off” shelf, and one on the “Dead dove do not eat” shelf. Tim had taken a label maker to them earlier in the morning), and only just gotten to the genuine statement in the stack.

It’s about a band, a small jazz club, and a massacre of eleven people.

But he finishes, clicks off the tape recorder, and clears his throat.

He’d lost contact with his old college band years ago, of course. As with many college friendships. And it’s not like he’s being particularly nostalgic after reading about a monstrous, murder-inducing band that is irrevocably tied to a creature similar to that which ties him to the Archives, but.

Maybe he can bring his harmonica to his next job review.

But Jon checks his phone instead of debating where his harmonica would possibly be in his flat – closet? Bedside table? – and has a brief moment of panic in which he tries to remember Angela’s landline.

It was Sasha who had called.

Jon taps his fingers quickly against the surface of his desk as he calls her back, a rhythmic staccato noise aided by his rapidly regrowing fingernails – unpainted, because the memory of dirt and blood in his mouth is not one he’d like to repeat, thank you. If he was looking to repeat that sensation, he’d just get in a fistfight.

“So,” Sasha says cheerfully when she picks up, “what do you want from Starbucks?”

Jon blinks. “Is this a new code?”

“No, I want a frappucino. I’m almost at the front of the line, do you want anything?”

“Matcha tea, please.”

“That tastes like grass, and also Martin’s going to break up with you.”

Jon hears the slightly dampened conversation between Sasha and the barista, continues tapping his nails against the desk as Sasha makes cheerful small talk with a different barista as the order is made.

And then he hears the sound of a door opening, and Sasha speaks again.

“Peter got shot with a bullet that then magically vanished and the attending nurse got pulled before a disciplinary board for stealing it,” Sasha says quickly. “It was found in his flat. Nothing spooky.”

Jon sighs, turning on his computer and pulling up Google. Jennifer Ling wasn’t going to find herself, and the phone number was far too smudged for Jon to call. “Thank you. That’s it.”

//

Jennifer Ling, as Jon records, is dead after a particularly awful incident surrounding a hammer. Maybe she was good enough with computers to have gotten the footage put together. Not a good way to die.

//

“You’re safe, my child,” Sasha deadpans as she hands Jon his tea in exchange for a small handful of pocket change that covered the cost that had been hiding in Jon’s desk drawer.

“Ah. I owe you my life,” Jon says. “Copy down the work for Peter Moreau, please. And then if you don’t mind, there’s a false statement I’d like you to record.”

“It’s three!”

“And we get off at five,” Jon points out. “And you have coffee.”

Sasha gives him a wounded look.

“Tim’s in, he’ll mock it with you.”

The wounded look shifts into glee, and Jon begins to worry for the general health and sheer level of schadenfreude – actually, no, he’s in no place to talk.

“How is Tim?”

“Better at taking meds than I am,” Jon mutters.

Sasha does not hit him over the head, but Jon thinks it’s a very close thing.

“Martin?”

“He… worries.”

Sasha sighs. “That’s Martin,” she agrees. “Alright, have fun with your… wait, are you actually color-coding them now?”

“Yes. Red folders for genuine, plain for everything else. Shelve according to your discretion, since we now have specific shelves for varying genres.”

Sasha laughs. “You’re not wrong.”

“I have good ideas!” Tim calls as he walks past with a small stack of folders in his arms – eight, to be exact, because any more and Martin would have insisted on taking the stack for him.

Jon doesn’t pay attention to the quick back-and-forth between Sasha and Tim, just smiles as he turns to his work. One more red folder that he’d like to finish the follow-up on. Hopefully, it won’t take too long.

(Shockingly, it did not.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nail polish, weekend plans, and an introduction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://sticksthestrangeone.tumblr.com/post/642707049714761728/scritches-sketches-part-2-electric-boogaloo y a l l fuckin look!
> 
> also ao3 might say this is posted on sunday but it's saturday where i am so shhh

Jon doesn’t wake slowly.

He wakes cold and is bleary for only a moment, and then everything comes at him at once, and his eyes open wide as he searches his bedroom for what’s wrong, what’s making that _noise_ –

“Oh.” Jon struggles to sit up and scoots over on the bed, placing a hand on Martin’s shaking back. “Martin?”

Martin sniffles, tries to mutter something, but Jon shushes him awkwardly, leaning against Martin’s side. “It’s okay, Martin.”

(Later, after he’s all cried out and vaguely dehydrated, with mug of tea in hand that he himself made because Jon has learned to stick to baking and leave the tea to Martin, Martin will wonder again where Jon learned Polish. But at the moment, sobbing on the edge of the bed, Martin’s a bit busy panicking because he just dreamed of worms and canned peaches and worse, so he’s a bit too preoccupied to wonder about who Jon’s Polish tutor was.)

//

“Elias, the police called,” Rosie says, sticking her head into Elias’ office. He was pouring over spreadsheets. Budgeting, not scheduling, thank God. The last time he’d gone over her scheduling, he’d created an extra fifty hours of work for her, to be done in three days, and she still hasn’t forgiven him for it.

“Of course.” Elias does not look away from his spreadsheets. Honestly, why he doesn’t transfer to Excel, Rosie has no idea. “Have they decided who will be investigating Gertrude’s… unfortunate death?”

“Detectives Tonner and Hussain, Elias.”

Elias frowns slightly. “Hm. That’s unfortunate, but.” He shakes his head. “Thank you, Rosie. Is that all?”

Rosie bobs her head, and retreats from Elias’ office, which is greatly in need of an air freshener. It’s still early – early that the only other people in the Institute are Gideon (oh his way out, thankfully), Jon, and Sasha, who came along to… what, tattle to Martin about how early Jon got in? Rosie’s not sure. Sasha usually doesn’t arrive until the last possible moment she can before being technically late for work.

Jon needs to stop leaving his keys unattended in his desk, though. Rosie doesn’t trust Gideon not to be nosy.

//

“Sasha, would you –”

“My contracted hours don’t start for thirteen minutes,” Sasha says immediately, not looking up from her book, which really seems to have seen better days and had a cover so water damaged that Jon couldn’t see the title, or even discern what the main color of the cover picture had been.

Jon sighs, and rocks up onto his tiptoes, fumbling a small box off of the shelve that was just _barely_ within reach, and would have been easy for Sasha to get.

It couldn’t have been Sasha, he repeats. Sasha – to some degree, Jon can’t believe that Sasha would kill anyone. And if she did, well, she wouldn’t stop at the small hurdle of someone else getting promoted over her. And even if Sasha _had_ killed Gertrude, nobody would kill somebody during an active police investigation. Probably. Jon thought that Angela had taught Sasha better than that, at least, but then again, Angela killed via inexplicable eldritch abilities tied to mundane jigsaw puzzles, so it’s not like Angela would be under suspicion if she worked on killing multiple people at once.

The investigation is active, ongoing, and – well, Jon hasn’t exactly seen the detectives, but he also hasn’t been at work, so, in all likelihood, it’s just a matter of follow-up interviews and questionings being put off until he was physically well. Maybe. Or maybe the detectives were busy interviewing the rest of the Institute staff and hadn’t gotten to him and his boyfriends and Sasha. 

Jon doesn’t think that’s how police work, but he can pretend.

And Martin? Martin hasn’t brought anything unknown into the flat – no odd, fresh herbs that Jon can’t place, no strange ingredients with foreign labels that Jon can’t read. Jon’s meds haven’t been tampered with. Martin’s been lovely. Perfectly lovely.

It might be easier, Jon muses as he limps back to his desk, back twinging with each step, if Martin was slightly less practiced in his caring. Because that’s the truth of it – Jon can’t place if it’s simply Martin disassociating due to stress and bad memories and slipping into a caregiving role, or something else, but Martin is _stressed_. He’d woken up to find Martin crying the night before, and it certainly wasn’t the _first_ time Jon had stumbled upon Martin having a nigh-silent mental breakdown.

Angela, the first time it had happened, had just patted Jon’s arm and said that people react in different ways. Jon had wanted to scream at her about how he’d woken up to Martin crying to hard he threw up, but Jon wasn’t quite foolish enough to do that.

Tim was not right. Tim was harsh and rough around the edges in a way that Jon hadn’t seen since the Leitner, but it was a familiar harshness and roughness, which maybe meant that he had killed Gertrude? But Jon had seen Tim flinch at loud noises, and guns weren’t exactly the most quiet way to kill somebody.

And Elias –

“Jon, since you have fingernails again, do you –”

“It’s nine,” Jon cuts Sasha off. “Would you mind recording these today?”

Sasha takes the stack of files, and continues without missing a beat. “—want to paint your nails? I have a pretty yellow that would absolutely clash with your eyes and I want pictures.”

“Might as well make Angela regret agreeing to your parents’ marriage,” Jon agrees.

“Like she could have stopped them.”

//

“Hi, Martin!” Carol’s voice is slightly tinny through Martin’s cheap phone speaker, and discordantly cheerful.

“Good morning,” Martin says.

“Carol wanted me to tell you –”

Oh, so it was Coinín. That explains the cheer.

“—that the needles you requested are in. Are you becoming a serial killer? Because this is the third pair you’ve gotten in two months.”

Martin shifts awkwardly. His most recent pair had been a casualty of Prentiss, because he was not going to touch yarn and needles that had been thoroughly covered by worms. Also, because he had less than two grams left of the yarn and it wasn’t worth trying to save, and also one of the needles was nearly broken. (He’d been making a doily. He’s decided that crocheting doilies is a better idea. Primarily because he can’t crochet.)

“I’ll stop by Saturday,” Martin says, instead of answering Coinín’s question. “How’s your rabbit?”

“Lady Beans is eating my hair! And – _ow,_ stop biting me, I’m just on the phone!”

Martin bit back a smile. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, of course. See you!”

Martin hangs up, goes back to his lunch, and pretends that his hands aren’t shaking slightly from the fight-or-flight instinct caused by his phone going off.

The last time he’d gotten a phone call on his lunch break, it had been his mother calling to berate him. Also, that had ended with Jon sitting in his lap. It was a weird afternoon.

“Martin?” Jon pauses by Martin’s desk, tapping the desk slightly to get Martin’s attention. “Would you look into Niamh Leeson’s statement, please?”

Martin flashes Jon a thumbs up, makes a vague noise, and smiles his consent.

“Thank you.” Jon puts down the file. It looks to be a genuine one, from the folder color. “I need you to contact her landlord.” He comes around the desk to press a short kiss against Martin’s cheek before wandering off to do some Archivist-y thing while Martin briefly short-circuits. _Briefly._

“Hey.”

Martin would generally prefer his short-circuiting to not be interrupted by a stranger, but he doesn’t express that as he looks at the stocky woman standing in front of him. “Are you here to make a statement?” he asks on reflex.

“I mean – I’m here to talk to. What’s his name. Jon? The Archivist?”

Martin nods. “Jonathan Sims, yeah. Come on, this way.”

//

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jon asks, internally leery about it all. “It’s not like you need to bribe us in order for us to talk to you. We aren’t exactly looking for trouble.”

Basira gives Jon an unimpressed look. “Yeah, I’m sure. I just – not on tape, I guess. Off the record. I’m not supposed to be talking about it on tape.”

Jon firmly dismisses all of the mental red flags that the detective has just triggered, and lightly moves the recorder away from its position between them. “That’s up to you. We don’t need your real name, if that would help. Plenty of statement givers give us aliases.” Granted, most of those aliases are jokes, dirty and/or immature puns, or worse, but the detective doesn’t need a rundown of all of Tim’s favorite aliases. That particular list is in Tim’s desk, and Jon has to resist the urge to cringe when he sees Tim add to it. “You can simply write the statement, and I’ll make an audio recording of it later, mark it as for exclusive use by the Institute.” Stick it with the historical statements that hadn’t been sorted through since they were written that only Sasha has an interest in. But also make a note on the first page.

“I mean – sure.” Basira sighs. “I’m not a writer. I’m more of a talker.” She jerks her chin at the tape recorder. “Let’s go.”

Jon pushes record.

//

“Supplemental: the tapes from the room with Gertrude’s body were removed when the crime scene was examined,” Jon says quickly, quietly, into the recorder. “Basira has promised to help me get access to them. I’m not hopeful that it will be immediately fruitful – they’re hard to move discretely, and I’ll only be getting one at a time. I don’t have much faith in Basira’s luck at getting one that might be helpful on the first few tries.” He sighs. “It’s something, at least. End supplemental.”

//

Sasha had lied.

The nail polish, while cheerful and slightly shimmery, was too pastel to truly clash with his eyes. It certainly didn’t _compliment_ them, but nor was it the kind of horrendous clashing that Sasha promised.

“We’ll dye your hair,” Sasha says, carefully painting another coat onto Jon’s nails. “See just how garish we can get you to look. I think something neon?”

“No.” Jon scowls. His grandmother had bleached and dyed her hair until the day she died, and he can still smell the chemical scents in his nightmares.

“Suit yourself.” Jon’s hand done, Sasha returns the nail polish to its bottle, and grabs at the sedate and shimmery navy blue she herself was using. “How’s Martin doing?”

“…Stressed, I suppose. Tim’s taking him out to see – some comedy, I think. It sounded awful.”

“Most do,” Sasha agrees. “I was thinking. Considering, you know, we forgot his birthday –”

Jon chokes on his own spit.

“Yeah, that’s what I was expecting. You have any idea how much effort Tim and I put into finding kitschy yet cheap presents for him?”

“I can imagine,” Jon says hoarsely. “I was not aware… well. I – forgot.”

“Lots of shit going on in a short period of time,” Sasha agrees. “So we’re taking him out for ice cream on Sunday. Or something. Does he like horrible comedies, or are he and Tim just going out because the tea shop is closed right now?”

“I think he prefers scifi,” Jon muses, wracking his brain for something that he can rustle up on short notice for Martin without Martin noticing. Poetry? But what kind of poetry does Martin like?

“Great, I’ll look at movie times, and we can go out for ice cream and then a shitty scifi remake of a classic TV show,” Sasha says with fake cheer.

“You’re just angry about the casting.”

“ _Miniskirts do not mean the same thing now that they did in the 1960’s_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in case you're wondering, i too have opinions on the star trek reboot


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rum raisin ice cream, musings on weaponry and gaudy stickers, and bed sharing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seriously, why is rum raisin ice cream a thing

The ice cream shop is nearly empty when they arrive, despite the fact that it’s near noon on a Sunday.

Or perhaps because of that, considering there’s a church not even a block away.

“Martin.” Tim elbows Martin, nudging him up to the front. “Martin, do they have a birthday cake flavor?”

“I’m not getting birthday cake ice cream, Tim! It’s not even my birthday!”

“We have sprinkles,” offers the young woman behind the counter, elbow propped on the counter and head resting on her fist.

“They have mint!” Sasha gasps, leaning over Martin’s shoulder. “Scare off the vampires.”

“Vampires aren’t scared of mint,” Jon corrects on reflex. He’s at the back of the line, hidden by the other three; Sasha sees the shop worker flinch slightly at the unexpected noise.

“Well, I’m not getting garlic ice cream.”

“I don’t think they have garlic ice cream,” Martin mused. “They have – why do you have rum raisin?”

The young woman shrugs. “We’re near a retirement home.”

Sasha frowns. “Since when? I thought –”

“Ivy Meadows burned down, and a new one was built nearby.” The young woman shrugs, makes a vague gesture at the ice cream display. “Any idea what you want?”

//

“You got rum raisin.”

“I,” Jon says, attempting to salvage some degree of pride, “was curious.”

“Well?” Martin prompts.

“…I don’t recommend.”

Sasha snorts indelicately, nudges Jon back into the group as they wander down the streets. His habit of veering slightly to the left when he walks has gotten worse. Or maybe she’s just started taking note of it.

“Back to my place?” Tim suggests. “I have heated blankets.”

“Since when?” Jon squawks. “I never found those when I was living with you!”

“They’re new.” Tim shrugs, grins a huge shit-eating grin at Jon. “Martin? Any thoughts?”

“No thoughts, brain empty,” Martin says absently. “Ah. TV sounds good? But really, you don’t need to –”

“I don’t need to,” Sasha cuts in. “These two, as your boyfriends, are legally and morally obligated.”

Martin raises his eyebrow at her in an expression that has definitely been borrowed from somebody else, because Sasha has never seen such a purely unimpressed expression on Martin’s freckled face.

“…Happy birthday.” Jon walks into Martin, bumping against Martin’s arm in a show of affection.

“It’s not my birthday, though?” Martin’s voice trails up in pitch at the end, and he looks from person to person.

“Okay, well, there was a bit of drama with Jon dealing with the Leitner,” Tim begins.

“And we lost track of the day,” Sasha finishes.

“Late birthday.” Jon gestures vaguely with his cup of ice cream. “…I’m not singing.”

“Yes, you are.”

Jon sighs. “Apparently, I am.”

“Good!” Sasha smiles down at Jon. “Glad we got that covered.”

“Don’t bully my boyfriend at my birthday celebration,” Martin scolds.

“No promises!”

//

Rum raisin ice cream, according to the experience that Jon now has and is wishing that he _doesn’t_ have, is disgusting.

“…no, it’s because they’re surfactants – one end is hydrophobic and the other is hydrophilic –”

“Just like my grandparents,” Tim deadpans.

“That’s homophobic and homophilic, and now I have questions about your grandparents and what constitutes homophilic.” Jon chokes down a bite of ice cream, and continues.

“Supportive to a really awkward degree.”

“Ah. Anyway, some work better in oil…”

//

The Polaroid camera goes in a place of honor on top of Martin’s bedside table – and then is quickly moved when Jon points out that Martin often flails in search of his phone when the alarm goes off, and as the phone takes up residence on the bedside table at night, the camera will probably end up airborne in the near future.

So it goes on a shelf in the main room. By Jon’s books. All of which are paperbacks, all of which are by different authors, and all of which have thoroughly broken spines that speak to Jon being _awful_ to his books, or being second- or third-hand.

“You like fantasy?” Martin asks, handing a small stack of thick books to Jon as he rearranges the shelf.

“Ah, not particularly,” Jon admits. “It’s a bit pretentious, even for my taste.”

Martin snorts, stacks a number of books due to physical size instead of genre or author, and puts the camera in the cleared space. “That’s fair. I think Tim’s still angry about some of the books he read in high school.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Jon agrees.

“Has he ranted to you about them?”

Jon frowns. “Is it the one with the gendered magic system? Or the one where the author needs to find other things to compare yellow to?”

“Oh, I haven’t heard the second one.” Martin glances at Jon in surprise.

“I heard him on the phone,” Jon admits. “I think he may have been talking to Sasha, actually.”

“Do you think she reads?”

Jon frowns at his shelves. “I… don’t know, actually. I might try and unload some of these onto her. Angela’s eyesight isn’t good enough for mass market paperbacks.”

Martin hummed, and took the stack of books back from Jon, adding them to the veritable tetris game of the bookshelves.

“Those are going to fall over and break the lens.”

“ _Jon_.”

//

“Supplemental.” Jon rocks back on his heels, glances unnecessarily down the hallway towards the dark bedroom. Martin isn’t an early riser. He shouldn’t be worried. “I found a few pictures that Tim took with the Polaroid after he got it. They’re in the Archives, and I don’t recognize the cleaner in them. It’s possible that Elias fired somebody, but I don’t know of anybody outside of HR who’s been fired, and Evelyn’s firing was because she threw a chair at someone making a complaint. And nobody’s really heard from Evelyn since.”

Jon sighs, checks down the hallway again. It’s barely past three in the morning; the only threat of being caught in his… personal investigation, is if Sasha decides to break in.

Maybe Jon should try and get the flat key back from her. But she’d probably ask about it, and Martin would give her his, and that would be too complicated.

“I looked through Tim’s flat today. I was – I got in legally. I was invited in.” He snorts. “I’m not a vampire. I was there for – ah, it doesn’t matter. I looked in his bedroom. Obviously, it’s not like he’s going to stash a handgun in his sock drawer, but I couldn’t even find a baseball bat, or the kind of medical tape that some people use on their hands for fighting. He’s not an idiot, of course, but – the gun. The _fucking gun._ ” Jon puts his head in his hands. “How did they get a gun, where _is_ the gun, and how can I find it?”

//

“Jon, I’m not taking your fucking paperbacks.”

Jon frowns at Sasha. “You’re not even going to take a look?”

“Tim, do you want to come judge Jon’s book collection with me?” Sasha asks, looking across the break room to where Tim is nursing a cup of tea in an attempt to reach some vague semblance of sentience after a sleepless night.

“Don’t take any fantasy written by a man born before the eighties,” Tim mutters, and downs the tea in three gulps, without even pausing for air.

“Anti-boomer,” Jon jokes.

“Absolutely,” Tim says, without a hint of irony. Women born before the eighties, look at Goodreads first.” He pours more water into his mug, adds another teabag, and ambles out of the break room.

Sasha looks at Jon. “I’m not visiting without collateral.”

Jon sighs. “I’ll make biscuits.”

“Southern biscuits.”

“What?”

“Gran has a recipe, I’ll send it to you,” Sasha promises.

//

Jon tries not to be eager as he opens the case from Basira, slots the tape into the cassette player, presses play.

It’s late – late enough that everyone else has gone home, and Jon tries not to think about how he feels about the statement. How he feels unwilling to share it – because he doesn’t know what horrors are inside, he tells himself, nothing else. He doesn’t want to stress the others unnecessarily. And if one of them is the one who killed Gertrude?

Maybe one of the tapes has a recording of Gertrude before her murder. Maybe she knew what was happening, took notes, hid those notes in the boxes of files in the room she was found in, and the murderer figured that Gertrude’s notes on them would be hidden in and amongst all of the other files.

…But Jon can’t imagine that kind of sloppiness from any of the others.

So he presses play, stops thinking for a moment about how he’s scared that someone will appear in the doorway to his office with gun in hand, stops thinking about how he may be sitting where Gertrude died. He focuses on the statement, the circus –

Tim needs to hear this one.

//

“Alright, boss, I really don’t see why, but…” Tim sits down on the edge of Jon’s desk, makes a vague gesture, and Jon grimaces.

“Please don’t call me that. We – we’re literally dating.”

“No office kink?” Tim jokes, and Jon’s grimace turns deeper.

“Tim, I don’t – I don’t do that.”

Tim pauses. “Like, in general?”

“In general,” Jon agrees. He very carefully doesn’t look at Tim, because he’s not sure how Tim is going to take this, and this was never something he had to talk about with Georgie because the only argument there was over Georgie’s frigid toes and they were both too exhausted from their homework to do much of anything and –

“Yeah, fair,” Tim says, putting a hand on top of Jon’s.

Jon looks up, and sees the smile on Tim’s face, and his heart feels a bit lighter.

“You want me to find you some obnoxiously gaudy stickers for your laptop?”

“ _Tim_.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tim laughs, and Jon clears his throat.

“Ah, I’m about to completely ruin the moment. And maybe your day.”

Tim leans forward and lightly kisses Jon, pulls back before Jon can comment or reciprocate. “Okay. Day ruining may commence, boyfriend of mine. Also, you mentioned this to Martin?”

“…It hasn’t come up.” Jon shrugs, and starts the tape.

Tim listens in silence, silence that rapidly turns stony and cold, the hand covering Jon’s slowly tightening until Jon squeaks slightly from the pain. Tim’s face is impassive, cold, and – well, Jon hopes it isn’t Tim.

He hopes it isn’t any of them. Because in addition to murder, that would also mean that they managed to navigate their way through illegality to get a handgun. But more than that, he hopes that it wasn’t Tim.

Because he’s not letting Tim go home alone tonight, not as Jon sees Tim’s expression turn stony and cold and Jon _knows_ that Tim is reeling inside and hurting all over again.

The tape stops.

Tim doesn’t move.

Jon stands, and carefully wraps his arms around Tim.

It’s several long seconds before Tim responds, returning the hug.

“Thanks,” Tim murmurs into Jon’s hair.

“Of course.”

“Any fucked up clown statements, let me know,” Tim adds. “…Fucked up statements regarding clowns or circuses, not fucked up statements of people clowning around.”

Jon huffs a small laugh. “I figured.”

//

Tim needs a bigger bed.

Because the alternative is Tim or Martin losing a solid three inches of height, and Martin shudders to think what kind of statement _that_ would lead to.

No, it’s better to just assume that a bigger bed is absolutely feasible, as Martin situates himself as close to the wall as possible, and Tim scrunches in next to him, and then Jon clambers on top and wriggles into whatever free space is left, pulling the blankets over them as he goes.

It’s a delicate process, with no room for error, and leaves no extra space in the bed.

But it’s warm, and it’s comforting, and Martin knows that _something_ put Tim out of sorts today, so the minor backache this will result in is worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ace jon ace jon ace jon ace jon  
> this is absolutely an idealized version of what coming out should be. but shhh it's fanfic that started out with a guy being cursed to be perceived as a cat, idealized responses to coming out are not the strangest thing in this fic.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's (slightly bloody) real estate.

Vivian sets the legal pad on the chair, clicks her pen, and looks at the table.

“Test one,” she says to Fifi, and sets pen to paper.

Fifteen minutes later, Vivian puts the pen down. “Test one done,” she says. Fifi tilts her head questioningly. “It can be captured by traditional art forms. The very traditional method of a shitty ballpoint pen and legal pad.” Vivian sighs, reaches over to lightly scritch between Fifi’s ears. “Test two. Naptime. Think we can both fit on the table?”

They could not. But Fifi curls up on the floor next to the table without complaint, snuffles slightly – settles with much more ease than Vivian.

Sasha had been the one to develop the test of “sleep either on or in the general vicinity, see what happens.” Sasha, clearly, did not have a bad leg.

Vivian’s going to throttle Sasha. Even though Sasha had been the one to implement the “Always keep a blanket” rule.

//

When Jon and Tim are finally free of bandages – in Jon’s case, entirely, both hands finally free of any injury – they don’t make a big deal about it.

Martin comes home and sees both boyfriends on the sofa, Tim carefully braiding Jon’s hair, Jon reading aloud from some fantasy novel, which Tim constantly interrupts to provide commentary.

“Good book?” Martin guesses, putting down the box of tea he’d gone out to get.

“Fucking awful,” Tim corrects. “I’m ashamed at what my former employer is publishing now.”

“Yes, when you were working there, you edited uphill both ways,” Jon says, waving a vaguely dismissive hand.

“Well, what book is it?” Martin goes absently through the motions of preparing tea, putting water on and grabbing mugs.

“ _The Idiot_ by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Can I continue?” Jon’s voice takes on a bit of the old testiness that had so haunted Martin’s nightmares. It doesn’t have the same effect, when Jon’s wearing Martin’s old green jumper and loose pajama pants.

“What’s wrong with Dostoyevsky?”

“ _Constance Garnett translation_ ,” Tim says with flat derision. “Hair tie.”

Jon hands Tim a hair tie, clears his throat, and begins reading again.

The translation is a bit _dated_ , sure, but it’s part of the charm. Maybe. If Russian literature has any charm, which Martin is… ambivalent on. There was still an old copy of _War and Peace_ that he’d never finished, sitting on his shelf, judging him. His camera is sitting on top of it, now.

It’s absolutely still judging him.

//

Jon sits at his desk, chin propped on his hand, and stares into space.

Basira had been by three days ago with another tape, one that only further sparked his curiosity. Maybe if he had time, he could go looking into the historical statements – perhaps as a side project, when he has time – and get further context. He’d wanted to do that ever since he started, because truly, what was the point of interviewing at an institute with such a reputation if you can’t get a look at the actual historical records?

(A job. That was the point. Getting trapped in that job by eldritch means, perhaps not, but gainful employment that lets him make rent. The historical records were a plus.)

And then –

“Are you sure I can’t get you some tea?” Martin’s asking as he leads someone down the hall. Not Sasha – Sasha’s wearing her boots today, not heels.

“No, thank you. I’m fine.”

“If you say so. Here he is.”

Jon focuses on the doorway in time to see Martin, and then an older woman. Middle aged, benignly pleasant looking, dressed in a neat manner that would impress even Rosie.

Jon stands.

She looks benign.

Her words won’t be.

“Hello, Miss Richardson. Are you here to make a statement?”

//

Helen’s words didn’t falter. She spoke with confidence once she actually got started, words about doors and mazes and worse, doors that were there and that were not there and that should be there and were not.

Her words are familiar, to Jon. He knows them. He knows those doors, knows the entity she describes, knows the kind of unreality that Helen is speaking of. Michael was kinder to Helen. Or maybe he’d sated his desire for entertainment with Jon and Prentiss. Or maybe she caught him at a moment when he wasn’t in the mood for causing injuries.

Jon tries not to be jealous, once Helen’s words dry up. Because she escaped without injury, physical injury, but the trauma is there.

“Do you believe me?” Helen asks, looking Jon in the eye.

Jon doesn’t miss a beat. “Yes.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Jon looks at Helen, at the bags under her eyes, her sallow complexion under her foundation. “Yes, I believe you. And if I can, I’ll help you. Did the entity give you a name?” It’s a cursory question, of course – Jon knows in his _bones_ that the entity was Michael. But –

“Yes, it – Michael. It introduced itself as Michael.”

Jon nods. “Thank you. That’s – that will be all, Miss Richardson.”

“Helen.”

“Very well. Helen, we’ll contact you if we find anything – we’ll be looking into Michael, and if we have any degree of success, or have any need for follow up, we’ll be in touch.”

Helen doesn’t look comforted. “What happened to your eyes?”

Self-consciously, Jon raises a hand to his left eye. “I had… a bit of an accident,” he says stiffly.

“Ah. Well, thank you, Archivist.” Helen stands, awkwardly straightening her blazer. “I’ll just be going, then.”

Jon turns back to his work, _actual_ work, the clicking of Helen’s heels fading as he begins to concentrate. Perhaps Sasha might have some detail to add? Maybe there was a detail, something minor, that could be brought in, could be used to maybe bring some kind of _sense._

Because sense is definitely something that exists in his line of work.

Jon shakes his head, looks up, and flinches.

“I understand you enjoy your illusions, but are jump-scares really necessary?” Jon snaps before he can think better, glaring at Michael.

Michael smiles pleasantly, a smile that curves and curves and curves. “Yes.”

“Why are you here?”

“I am collecting something of mine.”

Jon’s heart stops.

“Not you, Archivist, I—”

“Helen.” Jon stands, tries to dart around his desk, but Michael is big and long armed and doesn’t abide by the normal laws of motion, so Jon quickly finds himself pinned against a wall, vision filled with Michael’s face.

“That is rude,” Michael scolds.

“Give her _back_!”

“No.” Michael’s smile is back. “No. She is part of me. That is all.”

“She –”

Michael cuts Jon off quite quickly and succinctly, with one simple movement.

He sinks his fingers into Jon’s abdomen, slicing through jumper and shirt and flesh with ease and _pinning_ him to the wall like a dead butterfly.

“No, no.” Michael’s smile uncurls, twists into a frown that won’t stop twisting. “Now, Archivist.”

“If you are just here to stab me,” Jon manages, “why did you help us with Prentiss?”

Michael pats Jon’s cheek with his other hand. “She was going to unbalance things far too quickly.”

And then Michael’s gone. A door opens in the ceiling, Michael rips his knife-like fingers from Jon’s abdomen, and swan-dives through the door in a manner that should _not_ work because it was on the _ceiling_ and he just –

“Jon?”

Jon looks down at the blood trickling from multiple stab wounds in his abdomen. Nothing is punctured, nothing is serious, bleeding and knitwear damage aside, and it’s not something Martin needs to deal with.

He’s been very attentive.

There’s no reason to worry him over some minor wounds that will heal in time, with much less pain than the worm wounds did. Jon knows it. He knows how things will progress, how blood will congeal and scab over and cells regrow and membranes heal and skin fuse back together until barely a scar is left. And that will be all.

So Jon carefully sits back down at his desk, scooting his chair forward until the stab wounds are hidden, before Martin sticks his head in.

“It’s past lunch time,” Martin says pointedly. “Have you eaten?”

“I… no, Martin,” Jon admits. “I was busy.” Getting stabbed. Well, taking a statement that settled in his chest with a solid weight that felt as comforting as a hot bowl of stew after a long, cold day, which was a feeling Jon didn’t want to think about. But also getting stabbed.

“Alright, I’ll bring you something.”

“Martin, you don’t –”

But Martin is already gone, striding towards the break room with a surety of purpose that Jon admittedly envies.

They ought to pick up research lessons again, Jon muses. Having a human teacher to communicate with will help Martin’s progress, Jon’s certain of it, and now the only apparent danger is Jon getting stabbed by Michael. So long as Martin kept his pocketknives away, Jon’s sure that things will go relatively smoothly.

(Shockingly, they do. Once Jon gets past Martin’s embarrassed blushing and stuttering, by pointing out that they literally began these lessons by Jon _sitting in Martin’s lap_. Which does little for Martin’s embarrassment in the short term, but by the next day, Martin’s calmed significantly.)

(It’s the help. The one-on-one attention, the tutoring. Martin’s not used to it. He’s used to help in the kitchen, help with work, attention from both Jon and Tim, but he’s not used to being _taught_. And certainly not used to being taught by someone who _cares_.)

//

“Sasha!”

“Vivian?”

“I’m going to fucking murder you.”

“Yeah, fair.”

Vivian limps away, leaning on Fifi with each step, favoring her back. The table was _awful_ to sleep on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so fun fact, the constance barnett translation of the idiot is surprisingly controversial. no, i don't know why. but i absolutely think tim would have opinions on that.  
> also i, like martin, am being judged by a copy of war and peace that i have not read because it's 1200 goddamn pages and i'm a coward


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cameras assist in experiments. 
> 
> Paranoia continues. 
> 
> Jon bakes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, i know im doing shorter chapters, but i keep on running out of filler. I Try.

“Martin?”

Martin looks up from his computer, raises his eyebrows at Vivian. “I – hi, Vivian. Is Fifi off duty?”

“No.” Vivian shrugs. “Sorry, you can’t pet the dog. Favor – can I borrow your camera?”

Martin blinks at Vivian.

“The polaroid,” she explains. “I want to do an experiment, and you’re the only person I know with a polaroid.”

“How do you know I have a polaroid?” Martin asks, frowning.

“Word gets around.”

Martin doesn’t respond.

“Okay, I heard Tim and Sasha bitching about what to get you,” Vivian admits. “I promise I won’t damage it, and if I do, I’ll replace it.” She pauses. “And I’ll give you brownies.”

“…Okay.”

//

The next week, Vivian sits down in Artefact Storage with a well-loved polaroid camera, down one pan of brownies, with her leg acting up.

The polaroid spits out a picture. And the picture, once it develops, accurately shows the table.

“The table does indeed appear in analogue pictures,” Vivian says to Fifi, because Artefact Storage is creepily silent and the last time she played music, she got yelled at. “But not digital pictures, and it actually ruins the phone that takes the picture. Which is why I bought a burner phone to take that picture.” She sighs, and puts the polaroid in the file, and the camera on the desk next to her. “Think I’ll get in trouble if I play podcasts?”

Fifi huffs.

“Yeah, fair point. Elias hates fun.”

//

Jon taps his fingers against his desk, a quick staccato rhythm of sharp nails against old wood. Very sharp nails. Sharp and sturdy, sharp enough that he drew blood while washing his hair.

There are holdovers from his time with the Leitner, Jon supposes. Beyond his eyes and fondness for dramatically oversized sweaters.

“I’ve looked for further statements on Michael,” Jon says to the supplemental tape recorder whirring away on his desk. “Admittedly, I wasn’t expecting to find anything easily. And I was unfortunately correct in that assumption – Gertrude’s… _filing system_ made it impossible. And I can’t exactly ask Sasha to go digging in search of –”

“Jon, have you – oh, am I interrupting?” Martin’s face turns quickly apologetic as he takes in the file in front of Jon and the tape recorder. “Sorry, sorry!”

“It’s fine, Martin.” Jon smiles at Martin, turns off the recorder. “What do you need?”

“I was going to ask if you’ve figured out where to go next with the Williamson statement.”

“Are you asking me if I need you to break into another building?” Jon asks dryly, and Martin grins.

“I mean, not in so many words,” he admits. “But… yeah, I need to know if I should go get my sneaky clothes.”

“You have _sneaky clothes_?”

“I don’t want to ruin any jumpers!”

Jon shakes his head, exasperated, but can’t stop his smile. “No, I don’t need you to break in anywhere yet. I’ll keep you posted. Just – continue working with recording the disproved statements, please? Sasha’s complaining of a sore throat, and Tim’s being charming.”

Martin flashes Jon a thumbs up and retreats, closing the door behind him with one last apology for interrupting.

Jon turns the tape recorder on again. “Perhaps I ought to record in a more private place,” he says dryly. “But. When I came in this morning, the trap door was disturbed. I’m reasonably certain that nobody came in and went digging through my office, since I’m the only one with a key besides Elias, and he’s not exactly going to go wandering through the tunnels. It would ruin his suit.” Jon sighs. “In other news, Sasha bought me a keyring. It… it isn’t a gaudy depiction of a cat, and that’s about all I can say of it.” He turns the recorder off, and returns it to his jacket pocket.

The recorder is for his investigation into Gertrude’s murder. It is not for his worries about his relationship, about his questions as to _why_ Martin has always been so caring, even when Jon was rude and short with him. It’s not about his slowly dawning mistrust, his worry about whether Tim’s vacation to the states eight years ago involved experience with a gun.

But even if it _had_ , that didn’t explain how Tim might have gotten a handgun. Tim’s athletic, not a hitman for organized crime. His grandmother was briefly Mormon, not a smuggler. And Sasha – Angela would have killed Gertrude if Sasha needed, but she would have killed Gertrude with a series of brown paper packages.

Idly, Jon wonders what puzzle Angela would have used for Gertrude. Perhaps a picture of London in the 60’s. Maybe a library scene. Jon can’t say.

//

Jon carefully lays out his damp jumper on Angela’s table, fiddling with the cabled and repaired front until it lays flat.

“Are you going to explain to me how you got stabbed?” Angela asks mildly, wrapping the yarn she’d used for repair around a niddy-noddy to put it back into a skein for storage.

“I was cutting bread.”

“You need knife safety lessons, then. You carry knives, after all.” Angela speaks with a perfectly straight face, eyebrows pulled together in a vaguely concerned look.

Jon is vaguely envious.

Not envious of the reasons she learned to lie so well, but her ability. He isn’t exactly fond of the idea of being dragged into organized crime, being stuck with a stereotypically unimpressed stepmother, trapped with friends who took on frivolity as a shield against the crimes their brothers and fathers committed. He’s not fond of the idea of being trapped in a situation where his choices were assisting with family expenses or seeing those same family members, of having little siblings leveraged against him.

His grandmother wasn’t exactly caring, and his parents died when he was very young, but Jon knows for a fact that being orphaned and then somewhat neglected is a much better experience than Angela’s life. Of course, she ended with a kind husband and happy children, but puzzles never left her life. They’re even stacked up in the attic, more than he cares to count, puzzles from the 1940’s to now. (149. There are 149. Not all of them were done with altruism in mind, done to help people escape awful exes and cruel friends, done to help Angela herself escape the cruel men who trapped her with smiles and cheerful words telling what, exactly, she’d carried across the city, and how it would be inconvenient if people would learn what was in those boxes.)

“Or you need to learn where to stab,” Angela continues. “I’m sure you can find evening anatomy classes somewhere.”

“I’m sure that’s a bad idea,” Jon says immediately. “I’ve dealt with enough anatomy with my own injuries, thank you. I don’t want to learn further just how internal organs are sorted.”

“Go for the kidneys,” is all Angela says. “Or the groin. Or –”

“ _Angela_.”

“If the person is human, of course,” Angela adds. “Now. I’m told you have a brownie recipe from one of your coworkers?”

“Yes. Ah –” Jon pats down his pockets, makes a small _aha_ noise when he finds the photocopied scrap of paper that Vivian had given Martin after Martin cornered her and guilted her into bringing him. In Martin’s defense, they were very good brownies. “It’s quite a lot of _salt to taste_ and _mix until proper consistency_. I thought, well…”

Angela takes the recipe from Jon, peers at it. “Yes, I can work with that. You brought chocolate, yes?”

“In my bag.”

“Wonderful.” Angela smiles at Jon. “And we might as well make some bread, too. I’ll show you how to properly cut bread. Without stabbing yourself in the abdomen.”

Jon sighs. He’ll never live that down.

//

“Is this illegal?” Tim asks, pausing just outside the kitchen entrance. The building was somewhat run-down, and the only doorway was in a back alley, and Tim’s pretty certain they passed a situation that might turn into a street fight.

“No, of course not!” Martin tugs on Tim’s hand, pulling him through the doorway.

“Hey, Martin.”

“Hi, Oleg.” Martin waves at the young blonde man leaning against the counter by a stove. “They have very good food. A bit strong on the garlic, but –”

“Garlic is the best flavor,” Oleg cuts in, vaguely offended.

“Yes, if you’re trying to fight off vampires,” Tim jokes, smiling at Oleg. “Nice to meet you. I’m –”

“Tim,” Oleg finishes. “And your last name is Stoker. You should be more worried about vampires than you are, yes?”

Tim opens his mouth. Closes it. He doesn’t have anything to say to that, frankly. It’s a better joke than the ones that his school friends had come up with.

“I’ll start the pierogi now,” Oleg tells Martin. “Menus over there.”

The menu, Tim discovers, is a legal pad with a long list of presumably food. That is written in Polish.

“Uh.” Martin shrugs, sheepish. “I mean, the pierogi is obviously good, but here. Here, this one's my favorite…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no, i don't know anything about polish cuisine, why do you ask? and no, it's not an illegal restaurant, it's just shady. but they have good, home-style food. because oleg learned to cook from his mom.  
> and yes, jon is getting claws on the hand that he ripped the nails off of. because that's cool. they're not exactly obvious, but he could probably use them in place of a fork.
> 
> angela's backstory in full (warning: parental death, organized crime, blackmail)
> 
> the oldest of four children, her mother died when she was young, and she basically had to take over the responsibilities that her mother had. in order to make ends meet, she started running errands and doing small jobs for some families nearby, who happened to be members of organized crime. when she realized that and wanted out, they blackmailed her into staying. she mainly worked as an errand girl, and eventually ingratiated herself with some of the larger families and was introduced to their daughters/sisters, who basically went I Am Not Looking about their male relatives' crimes. angela's father remarried; her stepmother tried to take over the responsibilities that angela had taken, and she and angela butted heads, which made angela want to spend more time out of the house, which just exacerbated the amount of time she spent doing Illegal Shit. eventually she ended up working at a butcher shop, which then led her down the path of Flesh Avatarship, and she got out because a) nobody expected the mild-mannered young woman to organize accidents for the people who were blackmailing her, and b) those accidents quickly became supernaturally inclined. after she got out, she married a legitimate and very nice accountant, and had a few kids. both her husband and her children have had no real contact with any of the powers, and her husband died of natural causes a few years before scritches started.   
> **this is not designed to be a realistic representation of organized crime.** this is heavily fictionalized and idealized.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Breaking and entering, an introduction, and sitcoms, oh my.

“Supplemental. Tim left a well-established career in publishing for this… mess. I suspect it has something to do with his interest in Russian history and circuses, considering the sheer pay cut he must have taken.”

//

“Supplemental. Sasha gave me a book. _And Then There Were None._ Frankly, if this is a message, I admire her confidence in herself. She could definitely have gone places through sheer daring, if she hadn’t come here. But I doubt it’s a message. She wouldn’t have thrown it at me if it were.”

//

“Supplemental. I broke into Gertrude’s flat.” Jon clears his throat, looks around the flat, full of dust and not much else. “She appears to have had a rather ascetic life. Or maybe she foretold the minimalism trend.” Jon sighs, and crosses the room. “There is a basket of knitting that even I know is poor quality, and she has a single shelf of books. Apparently, aside from her trashy romance novels in the Archives, she didn’t keep any books she read. Or was a patron of the local library.”

Jon picked up one book at random, a paperback that he distantly recognized – something about a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, maybe?

And he nearly drops the book. Because every pair of eyes has been painstakingly removed, in a way that leaves the rest of the face untouched.

Jon puts the book back, and pulls out another. Not a _trashy_ romance novel, but definitely a tawdry one.

No eyes.

Each book he pulls out – all eighteen of them, granted – is eyeless. Three dust jackets are missing, and a design embossed on the cover of one hardcover book has been brutally removed with what must have been a small knife.

Jon removes a knife from his pocket, flicks it open. It’s his smallest one, one that he keeps around because it’s small enough that he forgets about it, and also because Sasha showed him how to use it to jimmy a lock. But the small, sharp blade is the same size as what must have taken the embossed eye from the cover.

Jon’s not sure if that says something about Gertrude’s own breaking and entering habits. Maybe. Probably.

…She survived decades as Archivist, she definitely broke into places.

With a small shudder, Jon puts the books back.

“Every single book she has,” he says, voice quiet, “has had the eyes removed from the cover. She also took a knife to a hardcover book to presumably remove an eye design. I… I need to do more research.” He clicks off the tape recorder. But he doesn’t leave quite yet – he goes through her coat closet (lots of cardigans, what looks like a Kevlar vest, and a fire axe) and finds, behind everything, a dusty shoe box. When he pries it open, he doesn’t find spiders or anything of the like – no, he finds old pictures. Presumably of Gertrude’s adventures in her younger days, university days. Each picture has been placed face-down in the box.

He goes through her cabinets, finds knives, what is either a block of cocaine or some kind of explosive, and a mug decorated with a cartoonish cat. The cat’s face, however, has been covered with black paint, eyes completely covered.

Perhaps Gertrude was simply coming down with dementia. Maybe it was a quirk. Maybe she just hated the designs and was taking her anger out on them? Thought the mug was tacky? Had fallen out with friends and family and didn’t want the reminders?

Jon turns the tape recorder off and walks out of the flat without touching anything else, quietly closing the door (with its jimmied lock, thank you, Sasha) behind him. He leaves the building without note, hands shaking the entire time.

Next, he’d hear tense music swelling in the background and then be murdered by some vicious creature who ate his eyes, or something.

Which is a situation, sans music, that Jon has probably read in some statement or another. Probably. Maybe from Tim’s _dead dove do not eat_ shelf.

//

Jon accepts the pierogi ruskie with a small, tight smile, accepts Martin’s kiss with the same expression.

There’s dust in Jon’s hair.

Is Jon allergic, Martin wonders? Maybe he feels sick?

But Jon doesn’t say anything, just quietly munches away on the pierogi, doesn’t even comment on the quality of the pastry, which – it’s his babcia’s recipe, yes, but it’s been _forever_ since Martin made pierogi himself, and he’d like a bit of commentary.

Martin clears his throat, and Jon nearly drops the pierogi, he starts so violently at the noise.

“Are you okay?” Martin asks tentatively.

“…Yes?” Jon’s voice trails up at the end of the word, turning the statement into a question. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, your hair is dusty, and you haven’t commented on which filling you like more.”

“My hair is going grey, not dusty,” Jon deadpans, a bit of a genuine smile beginning to appear on his face. “But, ah.” He pauses. “Which fillings have I eaten?”

Martin puts his face in his hands and _despairs_.

“Was there apple?” Jon asks hopefully, and Martin feels his will to live slowly die.

“It was potato. And onion. And quark.” Martin peeks through his fingers, and sees Jon’s conflicted expression.

“Maybe a bit less quark, next time?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about, do you?”

“…No,” Jon admits. “What’s quark?”

Martin sighs.

//

“Supplemental. I think Gertrude’s flat has… affected me more than I thought. I can’t help but feel that I’m being watched.” Jon turns off the tape recorder as he leaves, head down against the wind and rain, and nearly walks into a stocky woman with her hood up. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“No worries.” Her eyes are a very light brown, and very keen on Jon as he walks away.

Basira hadn’t lied when she said that the Archivist was short, Daisy muses. Walks fast, though. Very fast.

//

Perhaps Basira is leading him on. Dangling tapes like a carrot, because if he wants to know _more_ , he can’t leave. But – well, gift horses and mouths, after all.

Jon’s hands are steady as he slides the tape into the player, though. The shaking that had started last night, the cramps, the lightheadedness – it all began to slowly fade away as the tape stuttered, and then played.

“ _Are you quite recovered_?”

“ _Yes. Well, enough to tell my story, at least_.”

Jon listens closely – to the tape, mostly, but keeping half an ear tuned to the sounds of the Archives, should any of the others arrive. The tape is for him, after all. Not for the others.

He listens as the old man describes his experiences in war, his exploration of an old city – and exploration of the place _under_ the city. Jon’s heartbeat picks up as he listens, at the description of the one-eyed creature, the scrolls, the dead body with its eyes gouged out centuries before.

The eyes.

Gertrude had removed the eyes from every place in her flat, cutting them out of her book covers and hiding away her pictures in a dark, covered box, even had a mug with a cat painted on it that she had taken black paint to, to cover the eyes.

Was she trying to blind someone, keep them unaware?

Had the long-dead person with their gouged-out eyes blinded themselves to keep someone else from seeing through them?

…Jon needs to look through statements. Older statements, statements that he hasn’t yet color-coded, look for statements about being watched and observed and seen, and how people _escaped_ that.

After this tape, of course. Martin won’t be surprised by him staying late.

//

“Jon!” Tim leans theatrically against the doorframe, wide grin on his face.

“Tim?” Jon looks at Tim, looks over Tim’s shoulder to see Martin, blinks slowly. “Are you done recording?”

“Well, yeah, but also it’s time to go!” Tim advances into the office, and Jon feels vaguely hunted. “You’ve been staying late all week, we’re going home.”

“…Why?”

“Well, it’s a fucking _Friday_ –”

“Tim!” Martin yelps. “We’re still at work!”

“Yeah, and we’re off the clock!” Tim shakes his head in exaggerated exasperation. “And Martin guilted his grandmother into sending over some of her recipes, and I have a fridge full of Polish food, and also Netflix.” Tim pulls Jon’s chair, and thereby Jon, away from Jon’s desk. “Your spooky files can wait. Netflix just got the next season of _The Good Place_ and I’m not waiting on Martin any longer, and Martin isn’t watching it without you.”

“I don’t want to watch it twice,” Martin protests, but it’s a paltry thing, and he’s fighting off a smile as he and Tim herd Jon out of the Archives. Sasha, from her desk, makes slightly mocking kissy faces at Jon as they pass, and cackles madly when he makes a rude gesture at her, because she is at heart utterly incorrigible and the kind of sibling that would have probably greatly stressed Jon out as a child. He’s just lucky that his own grandmother didn’t keep any childhood photos, for Sasha to inevitably track down and use to tease him. Because she would absolutely manage.

“…Jon likes it, right?” Martin nudges Jon.

“Hm?”

“ _The Good Place_. You like it, right?”

Jon shrugs.

“Close enough,” Tim says cheerfully.

//

They stay at Tim’s, that night. Well, more accurately, they all fall asleep on Tim’s couch, plied with truly excessive amounts of Polish food and tea, buried under blankets. Jon wakes up slumped against Martin, braid half undone and a chunk of hair stuck against his cheek, at a time in the morning that only Sasha would consider normal. And then he promptly goes back to sleep, because it’s Saturday, and the secrets and horrors tied to eyes and creatures ensconced under Alexandria can wait. At least until a more reasonable hour.

(“Jon, I swear, if you try to go to work today I _will_ strangle you.”

“But who will read bad translations of Russian literature if you do?”

“I hate that that’s a good point.”

“Jon, sit down. Tim, watch the pancakes? Nobody’s going anywhere without breakfast.”

Nobody went anywhere. They were only three episodes into the new season, after all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "pierogi ruskie" is not "russian pierogi" it's actually ruthian pierogi. i read wikipedia, i am definitely 100% an expert on this.   
> also! i was reading the wiki to get details on the crusader statement, and yall. assuming the guy in the tabard blinded himself, that's some serious Precedent for what melanie and eric delano did later  
> I Just Think It's Neat
> 
> also yes, that's daisy who's introduced


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Beholding makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup yall i nearly made myself cry over this

In a moment of curiosity, Jon goes and digs through the Archives in search of Gertrude’s books.

Trashy romance novels, each and every one, with lurid covers and questionably fitting corsets and, in the case of one that was so… _well-loved_ that the cover had completely fallen off, with an opening chapter title of “ _In Which Parasols Prove Useful_ ” that makes him morbidly curious just what use parasols find in that particular book.

But each book – parasol-referencing book notwithstanding – had a cover too busy featuring a particularly fit torso, or particularly ill-fitting top, or an ill-fitting top in the midst of being clumsily removed. There were no eyes. No need for Gertrude to go at them with a pair of scissors or a marker. Maybe that’s why she loved the genre so much?

(Elias can attest that the lack of eyes is _not_ why she loved romance novels. But Jon has been behaving quite well, and there are other things he can use to torment Jon that don’t include dredging up the horrors that Gertrude’s literature put him through.)

Jon sighs, and puts the novels away. He can hear Gideon finishing up in the main area, which means that it’s not going to be long before the others arrive, and he isn’t going to give Sasha any romance novel-related ammunition for teasing, thank you.

But he fumbles one book as he returns it to its place in the box, hears it land against one of the other books with a sound that it most definitely not the sound that should be made if one were to, say, drop one cheap paperback on top of another.

Slowly, Jon reaches into the box, pulls out both the stray paperback and the paperback that apparently is not _just_ a paperback.

It’s a box. Made from the gutted corpse of a paperback romance novel, granted, but a box.

With something inside.

Jon slides his nail under the cover, lifts, and looks into the small hollow revealed. There is a tape.

It’s a statement.

It’s… very definitely misfiled.

Jon removes the tape and the statement folder, drops the romance novel/box back into the bin with the other romance novels, and hurries to his office.

//

_Statement of Annamaria Ysolde Gilbraith. Taken directly from subject,_ the notes read. _Regarding a man she thought was a cat._

Jon swallows heavily, and plays the tape.

He’s not sure why he’s surprised when it’s Tim’s voice that comes out, considering the _date_ of the statement, the handwriting on the paper, but he is. He’s surprised and disquieted, because if Tim had lied to him about this, hadn’t felt the need to tell him that someone had arrived to talk about _Jon’s own misadventures with a Leitner_ , then – well – granted, that doesn’t make Tim a murderer, but. It brings up some rather unfortunate questions.

But at the same time, Jon can barely sit still, because that is a _statement_ in _his archive_ that he was never told about, that was purposefully hidden from him, in an attempt to, what, spare his delicate sensibilities? Stop him from fainting from shock and horror like a character in one of those novels he just dug through?

Jon pauses, takes a deep breath. He doesn’t need a new file folder for this one, at least.

And he won’t leap to conclusions. Not yet. Because one hidden statement is – a bit of an unpleasant beginning, but Tim isn’t spiteful enough to do it with others. Supernatural job security be damned. Jon doesn’t – Jon _can’t_ believe that Tim would do this multiple times. Because that would make things a bit… difficult. In ways personal and professional.

Jon wants to cry.

He doesn’t, though. Because there is work to do, and crying would just make casualties of the papers already spread across his desk.

//

“Why are you handing me a shady-looking box of tea?” Sasha asks Vivian, vaguely bemused.

“It’s poisoned,” Vivian says dryly. “I spent three hours asleep on top of the table. Fuck you. That was a _stupid_ experiment to create.”

Sasha takes the tea, puts it safely in her bag, and then looks at Vivian. “It’s a thing because I fell asleep at work and had to come up with an explanation on the spot when Richard asked me what I was doing.”

Vivian briefly considers the merits of beating Sasha’s head in with a chair.

Sasha smiles politely.

Vivian steps aside with a slightly put-out expression.

Maybe there will be opportunity for brutal chair murder later.

//

Martin sniffs delicately at the tea leaves, picks up a pinch between his fingers, eyes it critically. “I think it’s just black tea,” he says after a moment. “Maybe she left the box out in the sun, so that’s why it looks weird?”

“Huh.” Sasha frowns at the box of tea, hands wrapped around a mug of safe hot chocolate. “You sure?”

“No, but it’s not like we have anywhere we can do testing,” Martin points out.

“…I’ll just toss it.”

“She emptied out a bunch of teabags,” Jon says from behind Sasha, who shrieks in a profoundly dignified manner and nearly spills her hot chocolate everywhere. “Got some cheap tea, emptied it out into a container she got at a second-hand shop.”

Sasha turns to look at Jon. He looks worse than he usually looks, somehow, worse even than he did when they were all starting out at the Institute and he wouldn’t know self-care if it hit him in the face with a tape recorder, which is honestly a feat.

“Is Tim in?” Jon asks, looking between Martin and Sasha and back.

“Yes, but, uh.” Martin clears his throat, puts the tea down with a vaguely disgusted manner. “He went out to talk to – Mrs. Herbert, I think her name was?”

Jon frowns. “I – I did ask him to do that, didn’t I,” he muses. “Right. Ah, thanks.”

“Do you need either of us?”

“No, not really,” Jon says. “Go back to – tea suspicion, I guess?”

Sasha gives Jon a thumbs up. (There’s either hot chocolate on her cheek or horrifically blended makeup. Jon decides not to comment in case it’s the latter.)

“Oh!” Martin puts down the tea, quickly moves around the table, and –

Sasha makes an exaggerated gagging noise as Martin leans down and lightly kisses Jon on the forehead.

“Get a room!”

“We have one, and we outnumber you,” Jon says, once Martin’s pulled back.

Sasha sticks her tongue out at Jon. “I’ll record a few statements after my hot chocolate,” she says, tone back to somewhat business-like. “Want me to tell Tim you need to talk to him when he gets in?”

Jon gives her an appreciative smile. “Please.” With that, he leans up on his tiptoes, pulls Martin down by the back of the neck, and lightly kisses him once before leaving the breakroom, probably in search of something appropriately spooky and horrific to record or make them research.

After Jon’s well out of earshot, Sasha speaks again. “You’re fucking nauseating.”

Martin beams, cheeks still red. “We try.”

//

Tim knocks once on the door to Jon’s office before opening the door and sticking his head in.

“You rang?” he jokes, voice monotone and deep, and Jon looks up from his laptop.

“Yes.” Jon gestures at the chair, says perhaps one of the most chilling sentences in the English language. “Can I talk to you?" Then, "I found something in the Archives this morning.”

Tim’s smile vanishes, and he walks into the office, firmly closing the door behind him. He stays standing, though. “What is it?”

Jon holds up a statement folder. “‘We will be doing absolutely no follow-up on this case, as all four of us can attest to its validity?’” he quotes, and Tim raises his eyebrows.

This is it? Really?

“Yeah?” Tim shrugs. “We didn’t want to drag up bad memories, so. I didn’t see the need to bring it to you.”

“Why?” Jon’s eyes are hard and cold, mismatched, piercing. “I should know if I’m mentioned directly in a statement.”

“It’s not like it’s something that would mean we needed to have an _intervention_ ,” Tim points out. “It’s just a fourteen-year-old who showed up a nervous wreck and wanted to talk about something she saw.”

Jon’s expression doesn’t change.

“Jon,” Tim says, carefully advancing and sitting down in the chair on the other side of Jon’s desk. “What’s this about? I’m guessing you’d rather we tell you, and I’m sorry, but it’s not that big a deal. It’s nothing – nothing _groundbreaking_ , you know? It was just a nervous fourteen-year-old who looked like she expected me to hit on her, and looked at me like I was a unicorn for being polite.”

Jon puts the folder down on his desk. “You didn’t tell me,” he says softly, “when I was directly mentioned in a statement.”

Tim waits, exercises every bit of willpower to not fidget under Jon’s stare.

“What else have you not been telling me?” Jon asks. His hair is a mess, loose and ruffled from constant fingercombing, and Tim feels a flash of secondhand embarrassment.

“Is – really?” Tim frowns, incredulous. “You think I’ve been _lying_? Because I didn’t tell you about a minor statement?”

“You were lying!” Jon snaps. “You lied to me! You – I was in a _statement_! The other statements about people in my situation featured a man dying of fucking exposure because he was just a cat, after all!”

Jon’s voice is still quiet. That’s the worst part, Tim thinks vaguely. No shouting, no dramatics. Just anger and betrayal.

“Jon.” Tim reaches out. Jon puts his hands in his lap, and Tim’s left with his hands halfway across the desk. “Jon, we didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Who else? Was Martin in on this as well?”

“No.” Tim sighs. “It was just me and Sasha, okay? It was right have you fucked up your hand, and we didn’t want to send you spiralling. We were _worried_. Okay, it was condescending, but we didn’t mean anything by it.”

Jon’s expression doesn’t change.

“Jon,” Tim repeats. “Jon, I’m sorry, okay?”

“ _What else have you been lying about_?”

“My brother was killed by a circus,” Tim says.

And then he keeps talking, because he can’t stop, because there’s nothing else that he’d rather do, and the words won’t stop coming, fluid and easy, as he talks about Danny’s death, about why he’s so interested in Russian circuses, why Jon bringing the statement about that creepy circus was important, why he has books upon books of Russian history and more than a few Russian classics. He doesn’t stop talking, and Jon’s expression turns from cold and hard to sharply interested, and he leans forwards in his seat as he listens.

And when Tim finishes, he feels exhausted and hollowed out, throat rough and sore, exhausted as if he’s run a marathon.

And Jon’s holding one of Tim’s hands.

Also, the pupil of his green eye is blown in the way that cats get when they’re about to do something spectacularly stupid, which Tim finds incongruously funny.

“…I – I’m sorry,” Jon offers, once the silence has stretched out too long and Tim’s on the verge of exhausted tears. “Thank you. For trusting me.”

Tim clears his throat. “Yeah. Uh, what the fuck? What the _fuck_ was that?”

Jon shrugs, a bit helpless. “That – that is how statements work.”

“Fuck that.”

“It’s true! That’s why people talk so easily!” Jon says, defensive and sharp. “I’m not lying, Tim. And – I’m sorry, really. But thank you. I – I appreciate it.”

//

“Supplemental.” Jon clears his throat. “Tim went home early. Well, I sent him home early. I – I’ll admit, I feel… relieved, I guess. Because it means that he wasn’t lying at all. I asked what else he’d been lying about, and he never mentioned Gertrude. At all. So he’s – safe, I guess. I can trust him. Which I should have done, _fuck,_ I should have done from the beginning. I was sleeping in the same bed as him, but I didn’t trust him.” Jon sighs. “I – on the chance that I die, and you’re listening to this, Tim, I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :) thisisfine.jpeg :)
> 
> let's just not talk about the fallout that will happen over the next little bit :) everything will be fine :) there's no way this is going to fuck with things :) 
> 
> also this was not in my plan, so now i have to go edit stuff in my planning notebook :/


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Thank you for trusting me."
> 
> Also, chocolate ice cream and _War and Peace._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as someone with anxiety,,,   
> this was not a good chapter to write  
> i tried yall
> 
> also i'm ex mormon so any weirdly specific dragging of the mormon church is because of that

_“Thank you for trusting me_. _”_

Tim hasn’t stopped thinking about that, hasn’t stopped feeling hollowed out in a way he hadn’t for years, since the inquiry after Danny’s death, since he had to look his parents in the face and know that he knew what happened to Danny and couldn’t tell them because they wouldn’t believe him.

_“Thank you for trusting me_. _”_

Because he had a choice? The words hadn’t stopped, he hadn’t wanted them to stop.

And now Tim’s sitting at his table, blank and empty save for the occasional wave of actual _pain_ in his chest, wrapped in a blanket with a mug of thoroughly cold tea in front of him.

_“Thank you for trusting me_. _”_

//

“You did _what_?” Martin squawks, nearly dropping his knitting.

“I.” Jon takes a deep breath. “Tim gave a statement. And – and he’s gone home, because I don’t think he can manage to finish work today –”

“That is really not the point here!” Martin makes a vague energetic gesture, and accidentally throws his working needle across the room.

“Hey!” yells Sasha, taking out an earbud. “If you want to be included in the pen wars –” She looks from Martin to Jon, and wisely puts the earbud back in and returns to her work.

“What was I supposed to do?” Jon demands. “I – he –” He flails slightly, then sticks his hands in his pockets because he might actually brain himself if he’s not careful.

“I don’t know, _talk to him_?” Martin suggests. “Was he – is he okay?”

Jon doesn’t say anything.

So Martin stands, shoving his knitting unceremoniously in his pocket. “I’m going over,” he announces. “I’m not off yet, but I don’t care.”

Jon doesn’t stop him. Not until Martin’s about to exit the Archives. Then,

“Tell him I’m sorry?” Jon asks softly.

“Tell him yourself.” Martin shakes his head, and leaves.

“So,” Sasha says, taking both earbuds out. “You fucked up?”

Jon walks back to his office without another word, and Sasha doesn’t follow him.

//

Tim hasn’t given a flat key to anyone.

_“Thank you for trusting me_. _”_

He doesn’t quite trust anybody enough for that, and besides, knocking is polite.

So when his door opens without someone knocking, Tim stands quickly enough that his chair gets knocked over with a loud clatter, and he whirls to look at whoever has broken into his flat.

It’s Martin. Who, at the moment, Tim trusts a _hell_ of a lot more than Jon. _Thank you for trusting me_ indeed.

“I brought tea,” Martin says, holding up a bag. “And your lunch.”

Tim slowly rights his chair and sits back down. He doesn’t speak as Martin locks the door behind him and bustles around the kitchen, heating up Tim’s lunch – leftover Polish food from that weekend, which makes his chest ache all over again – and brewing a pot of black tea. Slowly, Tim notices the sounds of a podcast playing, though he quite bring himself to pay attention well enough to place it.

And then his cold tea is being whisked away and there’s a fresh mug placed in front of him, smelling strongly of honey and clove and allspice and just faintly of lemon.

Martin, to his credit, waits until Tim’s finished drinking his tea to speak.

“Jon told me what he did,” Martin says quietly.

Tim snorts softly. “Yeah, he accused me of lying to him and then I talked about trauma,” he deadpans. “Fun times all around.”

“You gave a statement?”

“ _Gave_ isn’t the right word,” Tim says dryly. “It’s – it was fucked.” He sighs. “I don’t want to talk about it. You got any fun stories to bring my mind off things?”

Martin frowns. “I, uh. So there’s this tiny bookstore five minutes away from me?”

“And you never took me?” Tim demands. “Martin, I’m fucking _betrayed_.”

“Well, the proprietor has a snake, and also keeps on asking me if I have a girlfriend yet,” Martin says, a tad defensive. “She’s Mormon. And American. Really, she has little pamphlets by the check out counter.”

“Ah. Think she knows my gran?”

“If she does, I don’t think they’d be on good terms.”

The conversation goes from there, Martin awkwardly talking about the proprietor and her pet snake – who she let Martin hold once, and Martin still wasn’t over it because the snake licked his ear and he shrieked and the proprietor laughed so hard she fell over, after taking the snake back and putting him away. Then stories about church, and how he’d gone to confession after the worms, and Martin weathered the teasing from Tim, which was honestly the _point_ of that story, because it brought a bit of color back to Tim’s cheeks.

It didn’t stop the waves of pain in Tim’s chest, though. But really, Tim deals with worse each time he forgets his meds. So he could deal.

(The proprietor did in fact know Tim’s gran. They were not on good terms, but that was because Tim’s gran had vehemently and loudly disliked the proprietor’s favorite book.)

//

Jon stands outside Tim’s door for an embarrassingly long time, hands clutched around a small bag. Really, the only reason why he knocked was because he was worried the ice cream would melt. And even then, the knocking was quiet and hesitant.

But immediate silence descends on the flat, and the noise of friendly conversation stops, and Tim’s laugh is suddenly cut off, and Jon feels… more than a bit nervous, honestly.

The last time he’d felt like this had heralded the end of him and Georgie. It was a natural death, frankly, but he wasn’t – well, he didn’t want to see this end. Not just because of the supernatural job security that would ensure he continued seeing Martin and Tim every day.

He knocks again, once, twice, three times.

And then the door opens, and it’s Tim, wrapped in a red microfiber blanket that Jon recognizes and wearing handknit socks that he doesn’t but can guess the source of.

“Hi,” Jon says, when Tim doesn’t speak. “Tim, I'm sorry.”

Nothing.

“Ah, I brought ice cream?”

“Your admission into my flat is dependent on what type.”

“Chocolate.”

Tim steps aside.

They’re all silent as Jon comes in, places the carton of ice cream on the table. He doesn’t take off shoes or coat, doesn’t sit down as Tim retrieves three spoons. Martin looks up, looks carefully at Jon, but says nothing.

It’s not until Tim sits down, waves at Jon to sit as well, that somebody speaks.

“What the _fuck_ was that?” Tim asks, voice hard. But he passes Jon a spoon as well.

“There are times,” Jon says carefully, “if I ask, people are… compelled to answer.”

“And unload about the murder of their brother?” Tim asks dryly.

“Well, no,” Jon admits. “It’s – it’s about something… supernatural, I’ve found.”

“Why?”

Jon blinks at Tim.

“Why do you do it?” Tim elaborates, stabbing at the soft ice cream with a bit more force than strictly necessary.

“I don’t _mean_ to!” Jon protests. “It’s just – if it’s –” He sighs. “I don’t know. Sometimes it happens. Sometimes I know what to ask – I asked Angela about the, ah, murder puzzles. I don’t know where the question came from, but it just… did. It’s not something I do on purpose,” he adds quickly. “It’s something I just – it just happens. Sometimes. Not always.”

“Are we also going to talk about you accusing Tim of lying?” Martin cuts in suddenly. “You know. Since that’s a bit important for this whole conversation.”

Jon shifts, switching the spoon from hand to hand. “It’s – I’m.” He sighs. “I’m worried. You know? We – you found Gertrude shot, and I think it was Elias, and then I found a statement that Tim hid from me, and I –” He sighs again. “I’m sorry.”

“You said ‘thank you for trusting me,’” Tim quotes, and Jon flinches. “I didn’t fucking _trust you_ with that.”

Jon swallows thickly. “It’s – I don’t know. People assume that you’re not going to believe them? Melanie, and Helen, and Naomi, they all assumed that I was going to – to call _bullshit_ on what happened, and I – I believe you. I believe you about what happened, and…” he trails off, and Tim takes a bite of ice cream that nearly spills out of his spoon because the ice cream is a bit _too_ soft.

“You didn’t give me a choice,” Tim says softly. “You asked me a question, and it was just – I _wanted_ to tell you. There was literally nothing else I wanted to do more, in that minute. And, hi, we work in a fucking Archive with supernatural job insurance, but I kinda _fucking_ thought that maybe you’d tell us – tell _me_ – if you suddenly developed weird questioning powers, you know?”

Jon looks down at the table. “I – it’s not… consistent. Look – do you like the ice cream?”

Tim raises an eyebrow.

“Where did you get the blanket?”

Silence.

“It’s not _consistent_ ,” Jon insists. “It’s just – sometimes, it just… happens. Elias told me that it’s to help with statements, because it’s easier to collect them without having to stumble through someone’s deflecting, and… it’s not always. It’s not a constant thing. It doesn’t even always happen when someone comes in to give a statement!”

“No, it just happens if you ask a question about something spooky,” Tim says, standing and taking the ice cream carton. “I’m putting this in the freezer.”

Jon stands as well. “I’ll just –”

“Sit the fuck down,” Tim orders.

Jon sits.

“You think that Elias killed Gertrude?” Martin asks quietly.

“Well, I don’t think anybody else could get a gun,” Jon points out. “He’s rich enough.”

“Blunt, but accurate,” Tim mutters. He turns away from the freezer to look at Jon. “I don’t trust you right now.”

Jon barely manages to not wince.

“You don’t ask me shit,” Tim continues. “If you have burning questions, turn them into a normal sentence. Okay? I’m not going to have – have stories about fucking killer clowns and shit dragged out of me for your fucking entertainment.”

Jon nods. “I promise,” he says quietly. “I – I promise.”

“And you’re going to read the next chapter of _War and Peace_ , and then we’re going to act like everything is normal,” Tim continues, “because clowns and work aren’t going to fuck me up any more than they have.”

Jon nods again.

“Also, take your fucking shoes off. You’re tracking mud everywhere.”

Martin speaks, then. “For the record, I definitely do not have a spooky story,” he says. “Unless you count Catholicism as spooky.”

“Only the stuff I read in history books and the news,” Jon says without missing a beat.

The joke falls flat, though. It’s not enough. And when Jon reads the next chapter aloud, he’s sitting on the opposite side of the couch from Tim, with Martin squarely between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so they communicated! and tim is being Forcefully Emotionally Competent! but yeah no this is not the end of the fallout. shit's fucked yall


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Timeskips, romance novels, a taxidermy shop, and a book avalanche. None of these things are related.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> may or may not be a chapter on tuesday, as i think im getting sick (not covid, but unpleasant nonetheless); if im not going to put out another chapter, i'll put up a post on my tumblr at solitaaaaaairrrre

“Yes, this is enough,” Richard says absently, looking through Vivian’s notes on the table. “You can be done with it.”

“Thanks.” Vivian keeps her expression calm and slightly bored. Internally, however, she’s on the verge of crying from happiness. She’d played eight rounds of solitaire on the table, and the only verdict was that the solitaire was a cheat and now she was missing fourteen cards.

“You saw the box research brought in yesterday?”

Vivian raises her eyebrows.

“Replace your dog’s safety gear and then start on the box tomorrow.”

Vivian flashes Richard a thumbs up, and decides against ruminating on what’s in the box that Richard thinks it necessary she _replace_ the “safety gear” she’d macgyvered for Fifi.

//

“How –” Jon pauses. “Are –” A second pause. “I’m tired today,” he finally says.

“Same,” Tim replies. “Sore, too. A guy at the rock climbing gym raced me up the wall and I think my arms fucking hate me right now.”

//

Jon sits back in his chair, fidgeting nervously in a way that Sasha hasn’t seen since the first days post cat Leitner.

She sits for a moment, thinking, fingers slowly tapping against the side of her mug of tea. Not to let him _squirm_ , per say, but she’s not exactly going to rush through things. “So you ask magic questions that people feel compelled to answer?”

“Not always,” Jon says quickly. “It’s – if I ask someone how they’re doing, nothing happens. It’s only about statement things.”

“How do I tell if you’re doing it?”

“Tim says that it’s immediate.” Jon takes a deep breath. “If I ask – what’s your favorite book?”

Sasha takes a moment, thinks. “Okay, fuck you, we’ve had this conversation before. There are too many favorites.”

Jon nods, gesturing vaguely. “Exactly. You could pause and think about it, it didn’t feel like immediate word vomit, or something. I can’t control it, really, but Tim’s suggestion was that I just stay away from asking questions. Do you –” He takes a deep breath. “I can do the same for you.”

Sasha frowns thoughtfully. “Don’t ask me questions about spooky shit,” she finally says. “But I’m fine if you ask if I want something from Starbucks, or whatever.”

Jon nods rapidly. “I can – I can do that.”

//

“I’m out of hair oil,” Jon says to Tim, holding his comb with a white-knuckled grip.

Tim shrugs, waves at the floor in front of where he’s sitting on the couch. “I’ll still braid your hair. It’s not like it tangles that easily, right?”

“You’d be surprised,” Jon mutters, sitting down and handing the comb to Tim.

(It does, in fact, tangle that easily.)

//

The look Jon gives the little novel is not necessarily _disdainful_ , but it’s certainly verging on that.

“No.”

“Jon…”

“Sasha, I’m not reading a romance novel.”

“Jon, come on! Werewolves, vampires, overuse of the word ‘nibbles,’ and enough references to alphas and betas to make me bust a blood vessel!”

Jon pointedly hands the novel back to Sasha, who sighs.

“Nobody takes my novel recommendations seriously.”

“Sasha, the cover looks like something you’d find in a second-hand shop for free because it’s been there for eight years.”

“It was only published in 2006.”

“2009.” Jon studiously ignores her surprised expression, and how Sasha flips open to check – and how her eyebrows shoot up when she sees that it was, in fact, published in 2009. “Are you busy?”

Sasha blinks. “Is that a threat?”

“No.” Jon waves a red folder at her. “Somebody needs to go to a taxidermy shop, and I don’t think going alone would be… healthy.”

“Creepy! I don’t think you could have phrased that worse!” Sasha smiles pleasantly. “I’ll get my coat. Why are we going to a taxidermy shop?”

“Because I’m planning on taking up a new hobby,” Jon deadpans, following her out of his office.

“Fun. Do I have consent to pick you up like a sack of potatoes if something jumps out at us again?”

Jon narrows his eyes at Sasha. Then sighs. “Yes, you have permission.”

//

“Tim, I need you to call to Una Jonasdottir.”

Tim frowns. “It’s nearly five.”

“She doesn’t answer her phone for new numbers,” Jon says, holding out a file. “I just need you to leave a message.”

Tim looks at the file for a moment. Then, “Sure.”

//

“You know, my uncle used to hunt?” Sasha says as she ushers Jon into the Uber.

“ _Why_?” Jon asks, and Sasha waits a moment before answering. There’s no crackle in Jon’s voice, no _need_ to answer. So she shrugs, and speaks.

“He lived in the middle of fucking nowhere, and the local butcher was three hours away, overcharged, and cut meat too thin so it was hard to cook. So, he would put old-school traps for little animals. Had a lot of stew. Also his carrots are the best I’ve ever tasted.”

Jon eyes Sasha.

“No, I don’t get his produce unless I’m visiting,” she says exasperatedly. “Do you want to visit my overly chatty uncle in the middle of nowhere this weekend?”

“…I wouldn’t complain.”

“Great. We’re setting a hard deadline for when we leave, because otherwise we’ll be stuck there the entire weekend.” Sasha pulls out her phone, flicks through her contacts. “He’s an accountant.”

“He’s a _what_?”

“Accountant,” Sasha says absently. “Audits and shit. He’s an utter math nerd. Warning you now. Anyway, I’m mentioning this because my uncle, at least, _ate_ what he hunted, instead of sticking it up on a wall.”

“You’re judging the patrons of that shop.”

“I’m judging the patrons of that shop.”

//

“I’m making hot chocolate,” Jon says. He pauses as he walks past Tim and Martin, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes please,” Martin says.

“Ditto,” Tim says, and Jon nods.

//

Tim gets eight rows into a garter stitch scarf before he hands it off to Martin with a sigh. “Nope. Can’t do it.”

Martin shakes his head, tucking the project away and returning to his work on some lace project he was testing for someone at the local yarn shop. “Not without trying, you can’t. It’ll take time.”

“Time that I could spend reading.”

“Audiobooks are a thing, Tim.”

Tim shrugs, leaning forward to grab a book from the coffee table. His hand strays briefly towards _The Idiot,_ which he was still hatereading, then _War and Peace_ , before settling on a thick tome of a book that, were it hardcover, could be a blunt force weapon.

“…Steven Erikson?” Tim offers after a moment. “I have the first book, too. Can’t do Jon’s voices, but.” He shrugs again.

“Yeah.” Martin smiles. “Yeah, that’d be nice. Have you annotated this one with your opinions, too?”

“Of course. Who do you think I am? I have pencils and I’m making that everybody else’s problem.”

“Sasha’s,” Martin says immediately, and Tim lets out a loud snort.

“Gonna replace her pens with mechanical pencils and see how long it takes her to notice.” Tim stands with a small groan, twisting until his back pops with a noise that makes Martin flinch, and ambles over to a closet.

“You keep your books in a _closet_?”

“Shut up,” Tim says over his shoulder, smiling slightly despite himself.

And then he opens the door and yelps as he tries and fails to contain a small avalanche of paperbacks.

“You need more shelves.”

“When I want your opinion,” Tim says primly, collecting a handful of fallen, battered mass market paperbacks, “I’ll ask for it.”

“I’ll still offer it.”

“ _Thanks_ ,” Tim deadpans, precariously stacking the recovered books on various shelves in piles that will absolutely collapse given the slightest provocation. “Here’s the bitch! Alright, are you ready for the nerdiest fantasy book I’ve ever read?”

Martin huffs a small laugh as Tim returns to the couch, and sits as close to Martin as he dare – with plenty of space due to Martin’s rapidly clacking needles. “Okay. Oh, right, this one has the poem – shit, guess I’m not recommending this to Jon.”

Martin frowns at Tim with enough strength that Tim turns to look at him.

“He doesn’t like poetry,” Tim explains.

“ _What_?” Martin squawks, dropping his row counter.

“Look, I’m mad at him and we’re having issues, but I’m not going to recommend books he’s going to hate!”

“ _He doesn’t like poetry_?”

“I think we have another problem here that I didn’t intend,” Tim says thoughtfully as Martin flushes with embarrassment. “Here. _Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book –”_

“This sounds pretentious.”

“Are you reading my notes over my shoulder?”

“…Fine, continue.”

“Thank you.” Tim clears his throat, and continues reading.

It’s cozy, the flat. Jon brought a few candles the night before, unscented ones, but ones with thick yellowish wax that have a pleasantly rustic feel. Martin brought a small aloe plant, because his neighbor had delivered the plant with a plate of brownies and refused to leave with the plant because her own plant had multiple babies and she didn’t want to actually throw them away.

It is, perhaps, a bit excessive. But Tim didn’t mind, not when Jon had stood at the stove at one in the morning on the phone with Angela, carefully making hot chocolate under her bossy supervision. (Why she was up at one in the morning was beyond Tim. Maybe she was where Sasha got it from.)

He’s still angry, of course. _Thank you for trusting me_. But Jon has been careful since. And Tim doesn’t want groveling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hunting is, of course, a topic with a bunch of aspects and a lot of opinions, but it's definitely something more common in rural areas; and i want to emphasize that sasha's uncle is not a trophy hunter, or a big game hunter. and i stand by the statement that taxidermy can result in very creepy trophies. have i seen them in person? no. do i want to? also no.  
> coming up next week: sasha's uncle talking hers and jon's collective ear off about theoretical mathematics, other shenanigans, probably some angst  
> also, imaginary sticker to anybody who recognizes the book that tim's reading. and yes, the romance novel that sasha talks about is a real thing. it's called "soulless" by gail carriger and it is hilarious and it is a struggle to read because i, too, have to deal with nearly busting a blood vessel at the unironic use of alpha and beta in the book. at least omegas haven't shown up. _yet._


End file.
